Me Mam's Here!

Well its now a week since my mam and its time to document her stay here!

We met up with Liz's parents and went off to lighthouse park in exotic West Van. Its amazing what you take for granted living here in Vancouver and it was nice to be reminded how nice everything was again though someone elses eyes.

(mental note, look into renting a yacht)
(The 3 parents couldnt compete with Simon and Liz's climbing abilities)

Seattle, home of Hendrix, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and most famously Starbucks. I really like this place, perhaps the best thing about it is that it isnt as good as Vancouver and when you come home you feel good about it but apart from that it is a cracking city. Of course being america everything is a little bigger, louder and my patriotic but (for a short trip at least) thats half of the fun.

(The view from the top of the space needle)

(the view from the bottom of the space needle)

Galiano Island for those few of you who dont know already is one of the Gulf Islands situated South West of Vancouver. Meredith generously offered to take us there and to let us use her parents place for the day, more importantly she also let me drive, finally some open road without a bloody cross road every 2minutes!

(the ferry only leaves twice a day)

(im getting into my creative photography arent I)

(Arent I?)

(well its no supprise with a view like that)

(Meredith's place was far better than the hostels me and Chris were use to)

Grouse Mountain! Thanks to some free passes I took my mam to "the peak of vancouver" as chris reminded us on his perfectly renditioned speach.

(T shirt weather and snow)

(Vancouver from above)

(North Van, the best thing about it is that you get a good view of Vancouver)

Thanks for coming Mam hope you had as much fun as I did

Simon

Lets Paint Chris' Room

This was a good while ago now but the first time ive had a chance to get on and do some blogging in a while. Something about defacing chris' wall was remarkably good fun and i think the end results speak for themself

(hard at work on my unicorn)

(Meredith being swept away)
(Would you trust these two to paint your room? Next target, Keenie)

Rail Trip Info...

Just a quick one today with no time whatsoever to talk about the fantastic week im having with my mam (there'll be time later), just some vital info for the rail tripping BUNACers! I decided to try and get this thing booked once and for all and emailed a travel company in the UK (you see we cant get the tickets direct from the USA as its only for us international folk. This is their response

"Dear Mr Farthing (thats me),
Thank you for your email enquiry. The price of the 30 day national pass is £239.00p.p., we also charge a £6.00p.p. booking fee and a £5.00 postage charge. We can reserve the trains for you, the first five reservations we do free of charge and after that there is a £10.00p.p charge for every other five you want to make. I think the best thing to do is if you can give us an address in the UK to post to and they can post the tickets on to you. I do require the full names and passport numbers of the all of the passengers. I also need to know which journey is your first trip, as we send you an exchange voucher for the pass and you exchange it for your pass at the first station you get to in America, therefore Amtrak need to know where you will exchange the pass and what date on.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information"



Sounds good to me, and if we act fast (within the next month) perhaps we can all chip in together and someone can book them on a credit card and send them to my friend Liam, he could then bring the tickets when he comes in June. How does that sound? Any questions you want me to ask them? An obvious one is, can we make changes to the journey 'on the fly' and can we book the stations we want to stop at though someone else too. Maybe this trip will have to be planned in terms of when and where we stop, but we can still explore the area we stop in for a few days at a time and stuff. Anyway, what do you guys think?

Metatarsal Injuries, a Personal Perspective

Well looks like Wayne Rooney is going to miss the world cup, and with him go the likelyhood of us winning it. I thought I'd take this chance, with the help of the BBC to tell you a little about metatarsal injuries. This is the second time Wayne has broken a metatarsal, other players to suffer a similar injury are Steven Gerrard, David Beckham, Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Ashley Cole, Ledley King, Michael Owen, and myself Simon Farthing.

BBC's website, fountain of all knowledge tells me that a rest period of 4-6 weeks, with no weight on the metatarsal is the best way to heal it. I guess driving to whistler and running in the snow the week after is the reason that mine still isnt properly healed 12 weeks on. Although I can take some comfort from learning that Michael Owen took 18 weeks to recover from a similar 5th metatarsal injury to mine, proving once and for all that I am indeed fitter than Michael Owen. I hope you've all learned something